This weekend, the Yankees and Red Sox will square off in two games at London Stadium, marking the first Major League Baseball games ever played in Europe.
It’s the equivalent of two international cricket teams – any two of the teams currently competing in the cricket World Cup, for example – playing a match in the U.S.
That hasn’t happened yet.
But there’s hope. In 1993, baseball staged an exhibition at London’s Oval cricket ground of minor league players from the Red Sox and Mets. In 2015, two teams of retired cricket all-stars played a series of exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Houston.
Meanwhile, cricket merited a single mention in the Times over two days of coverage leading up to Saturday’s game. That’s despite cricket World Cup matches in England this weekend between Sri Lanka and the West Indies, Australia and New Zealand, and England versus India.
“Baseball has staged regular-season games in Mexico, Australia and Japan, but bringing the big leagues to Britain, where cricket is the dominant bat-and-ball sport, will involve some of the typical sights and sounds of baseball, but with a slight Cockney accent,” the Times noted.